Aims & Scope

The University of Jos Law Journal (UJLJ, print ISSN 0189-8884) is the double-blind peer-reviewed, open-access journal of the Faculty of Law, University of Jos, Nigeria. It publishes original, well-researched legal scholarship on contemporary legal, political, economic and social issues in Nigeria, Africa and beyond, and aims to inform scholarship, legal practice, judicial reasoning, legislative reform and public policy. It is a general law journal: a submission may come from any branch of law, provided it advances a legal argument and engages the primary sources.

SUBJECT AREAS

• Constitutional and administrative law — constitutionalism, the rule of law, separation of powers, federalism, judicial review, fair hearing and fair trial, electoral law and the administration of elections, constituency delimitation, universal suffrage and democratic governance.
• Human rights law — civil, political, socio-economic and group rights; gender-based violence and the rights of women and children; equality and non-discrimination; internally displaced persons, refugees and migrants; and the work of courts, commissions and civil society in enforcing rights.
• Criminal law and the administration of justice — substantive criminal law, criminal procedure, the Administration of Criminal Justice Act and its state equivalents, sentencing and non-custodial measures, correctional services, trafficking in persons, terrorism and insurgency, and the law of evidence, including forensic and electronic evidence.
• International law — public international law, international criminal law and the International Criminal Court, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international trade and regional economic integration (including the AfCFTA), and the law of regional and international organisations.
• Commercial, corporate and financial law — company law and corporate governance, banking and insurance, taxation and fiscal policy, competition and consumer protection, intellectual property, and arbitration, mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.
• Private law — contract, tort (including professional and medical negligence), equity and trusts, property and land law, compulsory acquisition and compensation, family law and succession.
• Labour and employment law — contracts of employment, employment with statutory flavour, termination and dismissal, outsourcing and non-standard work, and industrial relations.
• Environmental, energy and natural resources law — environmental protection and regulation, pollution and remediation, oil and gas, renewable energy and energy contracts, mining, and climate change.
• Health, technology and information law — medical law and ethics, reproductive health, confidentiality and data protection, cyber law, and the regulation of emerging technologies.
• Islamic and customary law — the sources, courts and application of Islamic and customary law in Nigeria and their relationship with statute and the Constitution.
• Jurisprudence, legal theory and legal education — schools of legal thought, law and society, law and development, the legal profession, legal ethics, and the teaching and governance of legal and higher education.

METHODS: doctrinal analysis of legislation, case law, treaties and other primary sources; comparative legal studies that draw lessons from other jurisdictions; jurisprudential and theoretical inquiry; socio-legal and other non-doctrinal research (interviews, questionnaires, case studies) that states its population, sample and instrument; and critiques of legislation, bills, policy and reform proposals. Every paper is expected to state its problem, analyse the law critically rather than describe it, set out its findings, and end with a conclusion and practicable recommendations.

MANUSCRIPT TYPES: full-length research articles of 15 to 20 A4 pages including the abstract and footnotes; case reviews, statute reviews and short commentaries of not more than 5,000 words; and book reviews of not more than 3,000 words. Each article carries a concise title of not more than 18 words, an abstract of not more than 300 words and not more than five keywords listed alphabetically. Manuscripts are typed in Times New Roman 12 point with 1.5 line spacing and 2.5 cm margins, in British English, with not more than six main numbered sections. All sources are cited in automatically numbered footnotes in Times New Roman 10 point, in strict compliance with the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) Uniform Format and Citation Guide; in-text author-date citation and endnotes are not accepted. Manuscripts are submitted through the journal website as a Microsoft Word .docx file of not more than 10 MB, prepared for double-blind review: author names, affiliations and contact details are entered on the submission form and must not appear in the manuscript file. Submissions must be original, written in English, and neither published nor under consideration elsewhere.

READERSHIP: law teachers, researchers and postgraduate students; judges, magistrates and other judicial officers; legal practitioners and in-house counsel; legislators, legislative drafters, law reform bodies and regulators; and policy makers, civil society organisations and international bodies working on law and justice in Nigeria, Africa and beyond.

OUT OF SCOPE: papers in political science, economics, sociology, religion, management or public administration that contain no legal analysis and engage no statute, case, treaty or other legal source; purely descriptive summaries of a statute or a judgment that advance no argument and reach no finding; opinion pieces, speeches and newspaper-style commentary without authority for their claims; manuscripts that cite sources in APA, MLA, Harvard or any other in-text style, or that use endnotes, rather than NALT footnotes; papers with no footnotes or with only a closing reference list; survey-based studies that do not report the population, sample and instrument; unrevised long essays, dissertations, theses and course papers; and manuscripts already published elsewhere or under consideration by another journal.